Electronic wagering games, such as video poker and video slot machines, are more successful, wherever they are played, when players are provided with a sense of participation and control, the opportunity to make decisions, reasonable odds of winning, and what the players perceive is an improved chance to beat the odds that are normally in favor of a casino.
Poker, in its many variations, is well known and is played using a standard deck of playing cards, and no standard poker hand contains more than five cards. In poker, various combinations of five cards from a standard fifty-two card deck have significance based on both the numerical or face value of the cards and their suits. The basic object of poker is for a player to achieve a five card hand having a higher poker rank than the hands held by the player's opponents. Even when wild cards are used, they only substitute for cards in the defined combinations and do not create new or broader combinations of winning poker hands, although they improve the odds of having a winning hand.
Poker is played in a number of variations including draw poker and stud poker. Probably the most common and popular poker variation is draw poker in which the player has the opportunity to substitute one or more of the cards they are initially dealt in an effort to improve the value of their hand.
The introduction of computerized, video poker games permits players to see the representation of dealt card hands on a video screen, and the players usually play against a standard payout table retained in a computer memory. For one example, conventional video draw poker is a single player game in which a player does not play against a dealer or other players, but rather tries to achieve the highest possible ranking poker hand. A payout schedule is used to determine the amount of winnings awarded to the player for achieving specified winning combinations of cards. After an initial deal of five cards, the player is allowed to discard unwanted cards and draw replacement cards. The number of winning card combinations possible in a five card draw poker game means that, even at the lower payout value levels, a player has a relatively low probability of having a winning hand, even though lower ranked winning hands of cards are the ones which occur most frequently.
The conventional poker hand rankings that are used in video draw poker, from the highest to lowest, are: royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair and a pair of jacks or better. Any hand having less than a pair of jacks or better is a losing hand. There is a wide difference in the winnings between a royal flush and a pair of jacks or better.
Over time gaming casino patrons become bored with standard versions of video poker games, as well as other video games found on slot machines, and the casinos are continually looking for new variations of video poker and other video games to continually create renewed interest and attract more players to play the games.
It would therefore be advantageous to have new video poker games and games on video slot machines which are similar to conventional games in their playing strategy but which provide for greater player interaction with the game and which would appear to provide greater opportunities for winning. Such new games would stimulate renewed interest of experienced players, and the interest of casual players, who will both find the new games exciting.